Sunday, July 22, 2012

Colorado and the New York Daily News

We may get to find out why James Holmes decided to mow down theatergoers in Aurora, Colorado at some point, since authorities have him in custody. We've learned a few things about him in recent days, but we'll learn more.

As it happens, we know that Mr. Holmes had learned how to make bombs as well -- as this report from the New York Daily News indicates, he had his apartment booby-trapped, which has made it difficult for area investigators to get into it.

INVESTIGATORS WERE scouring “Dark Knight” madman James Holmes’ Colorado apartment Saturday night after a robot neutralized a sinister set of booby traps.

Bomb techs successfully used a “controlled detonation” and a robot to disarm a tripwire rigged to the front door of Holmes’ pad to set off a maze of mysterious liquids and mortar shells.

The painstaking effort ended about 9 p.m. when authorities announced they had finally cleared the apartment of explosives.

“This apartment was designed to kill whoever entered it,” Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates said at an afternoon news conference. “And who was most likely to enter that location? It was going to be a police officer.

“If you think we’re angry, we sure as hell are angry,” Oates added. “There is no question about what the intent was of whoever designed that device behind that door.”

Had they not been warned, an investigator entering the apartment would have would have been blown to bits, as might have other people living in the building. Taken together, we can safely conclude that Mr. Holmes is (a) willing to kill people he doesn't know and (b) willing to use multiple means to do so.

As surely as day follows night, the gun grabbers are trying to leverage the event. It always happens. Take the example from the aforementioned New York Daily News, whose editorial board apparently didn't want to wait to read its own news reports before assigning blame, and giving Holmes a few unindicted co-conspirators to boot:

The police chief in Aurora, Colo., said he is confident that massacre gunman James Holmes acted alone. The police chief was dead wrong.

Standing at Holmes’ side as he unleashed an AR-15 assault rifle and a shotgun and a handgun was Wayne LaPierre, political enforcer of the National Rifle Association.

Standing at Holmes’ side as he sprayed bullets and buckshot into a crowded movie theater were Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, a President and a would-be President, who have bowed to the NRA’s dictates and who responded to the slaughter Friday with revolting, useless treacle.

Standing at Holmes’ side as he murdered 12 and wounded 59 were the millions of zealots who would sooner see blood flow and lives end than have to check a box on a gun registration form.

In a vain claim of innocence, the fanatics will say Holmes is a monster and a maniac, that he fired and fired and fired as a man possessed. Each protestation clamps their fingers with his around the trigger.

Because they made sure that virtually everyone, Holmes included, has unfettered legal access to heavy weaponry. And they made sure he was permitted by law to drive to the kill scene with a fully loaded arsenal.

Emphasis mine. So let's think about that. We've already established that Mr. Holmes was capable of making bombs or other incendiary devices. He could have used a bomb to blow up the theater. He might have achieved an even higher death total, since the carnage was limited to one auditorium. Had he decided "to drive to the kill scene" Timothy McVeigh-style, with a bomb in a moving van, he could have leveled the entire theater. For reasons that Holmes might share with us some day, he decided to shoot the place up instead. So if we are to believe the New York Daily News, apparently the reason that 12 people are dead in Aurora, Colorado, is not because another person was willing to kill them. It's because it's too easy to get guns.

Quod erat demonstrandum, right?

2 comments:

Gino said...

Standing at Holmes’ side as he unleashed an AR-15 assault rifle and a shotgun and a handgun was Sarah Brady, political enforcer of HGC,Inc seeing to it that as many citizens remain unarmed in the face of violent crime as possible.

W.B. Picklesworth said...

Putz.